By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

The Daily Buzz Podcast @TIFF 2014: The Yes Men

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Fans of comic documentaries can rejoice. If you’ve never heard of the Yes Men, you’re in for a treat; if you’ve followed their antics in earlier films, you’ll delight in a new barrage. Either way, you’ll find in this film a fresh reflection on the question: How does one sustain a life of activism?

The Yes Men Are Revolting chronicles the past five years of pranksters Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno (not their real names), the infamous activists known for duping the media with their impersonations of corporate shills and government stooges. At this stage of their career, the Yes Men have climate change at the top of their agenda, which takes them to Washington, Copenhagen, Uganda, and the Albertan tar sands. Laura Nix and the Yes Men team up as directors, recording every step of Bichlbaum and Bonanno’s journey as they meet with collaborators and pull off their witty stunts. Their planning and execution is filled with anxiety and improvisation, some pranks fizzling while others turn into media whirlwinds — and one case brings a threat of legal action more serious than any the Yes Men have ever encountered before.

But things become even more challenging as the pair enters a new chapter in their lives. Having crossed into middle age, Bichlbaum and Bonanno now have more at stake than did their younger selves. The stress of nurturing relationships presents greater complications to their lifestyle, giving rise to tensions that threaten to fracture the duo’s long partnership. Even as they question their future, they move forward with one more daring action, gathering a roomful of defence contractors and government officials under absurdly false pretenses. You won’t want to miss how it turns out.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon